Kitchen meeting minutes for 12/20

Christmas Proposal – Matt, working with Sebastian
Have money to get the meal catered, but need help with distribution and getting snacks. If you’re available on Christmas Eve or Day, please get in touch with him. Main meal is at 3pm, so 2-4pm is the time when he needs the most help. Proposal is still pending in the GA, but they didn’t want to wait to approach Kitchen after that since it’d be so soon.
Clarification: not asking for funding from kitchen, just volunteers and logistics help.
Samantha figures out they might need Kitchen to front the money for snacks, since even if this proposal passes GA with budget tonight, they won’t have the cash fast enough.

New knife for Chris – Chris
Today his nice knife got broken in half at Liberty Cafe. 10” global cook’s knife – $167 on Amazon.
Some concerns asking if the person who broke the knife can pay for it, but that person is on unemployment and can’t afford it.
Marlisa says everyone works hard, it was broken in the line of duty, so Kitchen should pay for it.
Consensus, approved!

Working with Food Sustainability – Joshua
Joshua was invited to a meeting with Food Sustainability yesterday. They’ve been talking to Simone, who’s affiliated with Russel Simmons via Rush Communications, who are interested in having a sort of vegan affinity group. They’d like to talk to us about their interests.
Related point: 56 Walker has a stipulation that any food we prepare there has to be vegetarian or vegan.
Marlisa wants to know if they want our existing kitchens to adjust their work, or if they want to open a new kitchen. Joshua says no, they have lots of resources (money, non-profit status, etc.) they may be able to plug us into.
Johnny wants to know if this is necessary if things are already veggie at 56 Walker, Marlisa clarifies that they may be a resource rather than changing how we work.
Kyle understands concern about involving someone like Russel Simmons involved, but he thinks it’d be good for publicity.
Benedict is confused about what’s being proposed. Joshua clarifies it’s not a proposal, more just letting us know this has come up and we’ll be hearing from the affinity group.
Justin from that affinity group just showed up, so he’s elaborating. He doesn’t want to replace, co-opt or take over the Kitchen, but to supplement.
Max: Do you need support from the Kitchen? Justin: He wants us to be in communication.
Their Google group is: ows-sustainablefood@googlegroups.com

Metrocards – Joshua
“This is a firecracker topic.”
Previously, it was very easy to get a Metrocard. Now Housing is trying to make it so that folks have to be involved in a working group in order to “earn” a Metrocard. Right now, Joshua is the person who signs for who gets Metrocards, he doesn’t want to be. Samantha is volunteering to take over. She went to a meeting about this: we can have two people signing, aren’t supposed to give out more than 7 Metrocards.
Billy thinks there needs to be a good requirement (not just 3 hours) of how much work people have to do.
Group votes Esco and Samantha to be the people who sign.
Kyle: Why don’t we share the 7 cards and just keep them at the office? Group: No, too difficult to get them back.
Max observes only ~7 people here want Metrocards.
Kyle suggests we look at how many swipes people need, and the people who need more get priority.
Sam clarifies that Housing wants us to be responsible for those who are doing the most work.
Samantha thinks we need to keep track of who’s working hard to decide who gets Metrocards.
Meeting degenerates into chaos with Doodles, Johnny, Eric and others interrupting, yelling, etc. for ~15 minutes.
Marlisa suggests we just make a list of whoever we want on the list, regardless of number, and send it to Housing.
Marlisa wins, that’s what we’re doing.

ComCom report-back – Will
There have been two meetings, lots of good planning done. So far Beau, Ethan, Uncle Bob, Stina and Will have met. Getting close to a proposal, we’ll be hearing more from them soon. Keeping short to make up for the last proposal running long.
No questions.

Christmas gift proposal – Samantha
Lots of people volunteer for Liberty Cafe to help us, so she’d like to do something nice for them for putting up with us and helping without protest for so long. Proposal is for 8 $25 gift cards.
Joshua raises concern that finance won’t approve receipts for gift cards or other non-food items, Marlisa counter-proposes gift baskets of snacks. Amended and approved.

Liberty Cafe cost proposal – Samantha
Liberty Cafe spent $5,620 over the past three months cleaning up after us and other expenses. Proposing to GA we reimburse them to keep relationship healthy. The money would be a donation to a separate non-profit.
Marlisa points out that a donation to a non-profit could be viewed as a “pass-through” which is a red flag to the IRS. Samantha suggests we could instead pay it as rent.
Joshua is concerned that originally the relationship was a sort of donation from Liberty Cafe but now we’re donating to them. Max points out that they are donating the use of their space, but this would be reimbursing for clean-up staff, etc.
Eric wants to know if this is for goodwill going forward, but Sam doesn’t know what our future intentions are. Unable to answer, that’s a larger question for the group that’s beyond this discussion.
Joshua wants us to go to Finance before we go to GA to sort out issues, lots of twinkles.

New Years – Eric
Is planning to have a celebration (complete with ball drop, hats, horns, etc.) in Zuccotti Park.
Wants $600 or labor to help feed 500-600 people.
Makes it very clear that alcohol will not be supplied, steering clear of that. Maybe a separate, private event afterwards will deal with that.
Samantha requests Eric come back with a more itemized proposal, it also can’t be approved until it’s proposed at a 2nd meeting (per new group rules).
Disagreement between Benedict and Kyle on whether this should be political or not, Max tells them to take it offline.

Buying Bill a cell phone – Johnny
Proposal not clearly defined, Johnny explains several options.
Question whether or not to do a group of four phones since MetroPCS has a deal on that.
Narrowed down proposal to $50 for phone and plan.
Leticia is added on as well, so now $100 for two phones.
Lots of confusion about how much plans and phones will cost.
Final proposal: $170 limit to get phones for Bill and Leticia and pay Jordan’s phone bill (if he can produce a receipt).
Consensed, Samantha will take care of it.

Final announcements
Kyle – please send him all your kitchen photos.
Joshua – we need to clean up this space when we’re done with it!
Leticia – thank you Will for lending her $300 to cover her food project one weekend.
Johnny introduces Esco and others who help him.